THE CULT OF CHANEL

More than 100 years since its creation, Annie Vischer discovers why the world still can't get enough of Chanel No5

- Annie Vischer

FRAGRANCE LORE states that in 1921 Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel – Coco to her friends – selected the fifth scent sample offered to her by Ernest Beaux, perfumer to the tsars and the French fashion designer’s ‘nose’. The sample would become Chanel No5: the fashion house’s very first perfume and, arguably, the world’s most iconic scent.

By 1921 Chanel was already a phenomenon in French fashion circles with designs that defied convention. She styled women in trousers and glamorised simplicity and comfort at a time when frilly dresses and restrictive corsets were the norm. It made sense, then, that Chanel’s first perfume should turn feminine ideals on their head too. The brief was simple: make a fragrance that smells like a woman. Which, in 1921, was a radical idea.

Before Chanel No5, the perfume world revolved around flowers in a very literal way – you could smell like lilies, roses, violets, take your pick… But smell like a woman? C’est pas possible. ‘No5 is a perfume with an abstract aesthetic,’ says Olivier Polge, Chanel’s in-house perfumer since 2015, ‘meaning it doesn’t seek to mimic the scents of nature.’ This was modern perfumery in the making. Leave it to Coco.